Dr. Aziz breaks asking for what you want into two parts: overcoming the fear and guilt that stops you, then using a simple skill to make clear requests. He shows workplace examples and a role-play of how to keep it short and direct.
Chapters
How to ask for what you want. How to ask for what you want in the most effective way that's the most likely to get the outcome that you're asking for. And most importantly, how to ask without that guilt inside, without that fear inside, so you can freely ask for what you want. Now, this is absolutely essential in life because the more you ask for what you want, the more you get what you want. I know that sounds like kind of stupid, obvious, but we operate as if that's not so. We operate as if we're supposed to somehow navigate life without being able to ask for what we want. Because I talked about in a previous video, asking for what you want is bad or wrong, or you feel selfish, or you tell yourself you shouldn't want those things. And then we're playing with both hands behind our back. It's hard to really get in there and create the life that you want. So let's change that now. Let's say you worked through that discomfort of not. I don't know what I want. I don't know what I want. I've talked about that in the previous video. You can find it in the description below. And now you're at the place where like, great, okay, I know what I want. That's the first step, right? Now let me ask for it. And then all of a sudden, you know, your throat might squeeze up like, oh, no, now I'm going to have to do it. You might just feel this heart pounding or sense of fear. Maybe not the day before when you thought about asking for the thing, but now in the moment, that's when the fear symptoms might start to come up. Right? So how do we work with that and how do we ask for what we want? Okay, well, there's two things right here. There's a boldness component, and then there's a skill component. Boldness and skill. You gotta have the skill to be able to know what to say. And I'll talk about that in this video. The boldness side of things. Well, I'm not gonna cover that too much in this video because I cover that all over this channel all the time. How to be more bold, how to be more expressive. The short answer is through practice and repetition. I mean, that's the only way we can really find that strength inside. There's a ton of other stuff I can teach you as well about it, and you can find it on this channel. And you want to go further, check out my website. I have live events where I teach things online. Live events, all kinds of resources. As well as Confidence University. So there's a ton you can learn about boldness. But the key thing here is you got to be able to consistently practice this. So if you want to build your boldness for asking specifically, then guess what I'm going to suggest you do. Ask for things regularly. Starting small. At my events, I'll have people go out, you know, if it's an online event, I'll have them take a little break during the event. Say, okay, go out in the world and ask for something. Ask for something. You know, small. Ask for a free drink. Ask someone to do something for you. Ask a favor of a friend, ask. And then we got to build that it's not just once, consistently. Okay, that's the boldness side of things. Now let's talk about the actual what to say and how to do it. And I have three, like words, single words that are going to be your guidelines for doing this. Okay. So the three words for guidance on how to ask for what you want are ssc, short, simple, and clear. Let me share what I mean about each of those. Short, simple, and clear. So when you're asking for something that you want, you want to avoid the common pitfalls of. Sometimes when we're. If you're coming from a place of anxiety because you haven't built up the boldness yet and you have a sense of shame or guilt, it's bad to ask for what I want. Then what ends up happening is people make mistakes where they do the opposite of the short, simple, clear. They will make their request really long instead of short. They will make their request complicated versus simple. And it's anything but clear. So here's a little demo of how that might look. We are padding what we are asking for with a lot of extra words. And let me give you a few examples. But before I do, I want you to think about what's something you'd want to ask for in your life right now. Maybe it's something you repeatedly ask for. And it could be anything. If you're single, you want a date, maybe you want to ask someone to go out with you. If you are in sales, you're going to obviously ask the person to buy the thing that you're selling. If you are wanting someone to have dinner with you or a friend, you want to invite someone to some gathering, or you want to ask a family member for something, or you want to ask your spouse for something, just think, what's something real? Because when I share these examples, I don't want them to be Just kind of theoretical where you're like, oh, neat. That works probably for him in theory. I want it to be for you in practical life that you can go use today. So where would you want to ask for this? Okay. You got something in your mind you want to ask for? Okay, great. So here is what not to do. Remember, it's going to be long instead of short, complex and unclear what you're even asking for. So I wanted to ask you about something. So last week we were in that meeting and we talked about some of the things we were going to have by Monday of this week. And on Monday, you sent me that email that told me that you hadn't gotten to the Deliverables and why, which made sense, why you didn't do it. And you told me you did them on Wednesday and now it's Thursday and I haven't seen them. And I know that you said that there was that other issue that was getting in the way, so probably the reason was that. But I want to know when. Do you think that maybe you'd be able to tell me more about when those would be done by. What am I asking for? What the hell's going on? Right. So that's an example. It's a workplace example. Did you at least pick up the scenario from what I was asking? Okay, so before I describe the scenario, let me just ask with a short, simple and clear. And then you'll probably understand the scenario much better because it's not all complex and vague and weird. Okay. And notice the body language of that one. Like, I'm having a hard time if you. Is what I'm looking at. I was having a hard time looking at you. I was kind of saying a lot of extra words. I'm going to keep it really short, really clear, really simple. I'm going to look right at you. I'm going to say, hey, Jim, I wanted to ask you about something. Is now a good time? Okay, great. So we talked in our meeting last week about having everything for our project, all the deliverables done on Monday, and we communicated on Monday, and you told me you needed a couple extra days to have them by Wednesday. And I noticed that you didn't get those done by Wednesday. And now we're into Thursday, and I wanted to find out what's going on. There you go. Right? Direct, straight to the point, clear, as short as possible. I mean, you could even shorten it. If you guys are both aware about the thing from Monday to Wednesday, you could say, hey, I didn't see the deliverables that you said you're going to get to us by Wednesday. I'd like to find out what's going on. Can you tell me what's up? That's even shorter. Even better. Right? So why don't we do this now? When I said this, it's probably not rocket science to you. You probably watched it and you're like, yeah, duh. That obviously sounds. So why don't we do it in the moment? It comes down to one thing. Fear. We're afraid. We're afraid of directly calling someone out. We're afraid of expressing clearly what we want. We're afraid that they're going to say, are they going to get upset in that situation? Maybe we're afraid they're going to say no. And so somehow if we make our request all weird and long and, you know, stretched out, that's going to somehow protect us. It doesn't make any sense. It's just some irrational pattern that we're running because we're scared. Just like when, you know, someone gets scared, they talk all the time and talk, tell, you know, reveal too much information and just go on and on. Or the opposite side, you know, I want you to like me, but I'm scared, so I'm not going to say anything so I don't mess it up. But then I end up not connecting with you in any way. Right? So these patterns we run when we're scared aren't very effective. And that's why it's time to upgrade this. So that's my invitation for you. In fact, put it in the comments below. What are you going to do? How are you going to upgrade this? How are you going to apply this in your life? And again, if you want to go much further with this, I highly encourage you to go to my website, draziz.com,-r-a z I z.com and you can get an E book on there as well as there's a coaching tab on there. And if you're interested, you've been watching this channel for a little while and you're like, this seems to be helpful that you're just scratching the surface of what's possible. I work with people in group programs and they have radical transformations in their lives. Why? Because they don't just watch a video and say, oh, maybe that'll apply a little bit of that. They're immersed in a program where we're actually doing this. We have homework, we have activities, we have exercises, we have accountability, we have support. And at least there's some power transformations, so click down below to check that out. Or go to the website drazizdraziz.com and regardless, please share in the comments. I love reading that. I'm curious what you're taking from this and until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.
